


The Ones Who Survived

by Vinyarie



Series: What We've Become [2]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Post-Episode: s02e21-22 Twilight of the Apprentice, minor appearances by the Ghost crew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:27:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25589056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vinyarie/pseuds/Vinyarie
Summary: Old clones, Rex thought, were not meant to deal with this sort of thing. Not with the Empire and the rebellion, let alone everything Ahsoka told him about what happened on Malachor. But he’d never intentionally turned away from Ahsoka when she needed him before, and he wasn’t about to start now. (Part of an AU that diverges sharply from canon after Twilight of the Apprentice.)
Relationships: CT-7567 | Rex & Ahsoka Tano
Series: What We've Become [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1509773
Comments: 15
Kudos: 113





	The Ones Who Survived

**Author's Note:**

> I know it seems like it's been forever, and I really wanted to have the actual next chronological story in this series done by now. Obviously that didn't happen. Between work being super busy, and the general state of the world these past few months being incredibly stressful and hell on my motivation, I'm only about 2/3 done with what will probably be about 30k. So instead, here's something of a gap-filler, because a) I wanted to get something done in this series, and b) the finale of The Clone Wars gave me a lot of feelings about Rex and Ahsoka's friendship and I needed to write something about them. In a lot of ways, this is my response to the last season of TCW.
> 
> To everyone who’s commented on the other stories in this series: Thank you so much! You’ve all absolutely brightened my day many times over, and eventually I’ll get around to responding to all of you. But see above about the world being stressful, so just know that I appreciate you more than I can say right now.

Rex sat beside Ahsoka in the medbay of Bail Organa’s ship, holding himself still and silent as she told him everything that had happened since Kanan and Ezra had left her on Malachor. He had to draw on all his training to remain attentive and focused without truly allowing himself to process it. If he was processing it, he’d never have gotten past the part where she said that she cut a hole in Darth Vader’s helmet and he was Anakin Skywalker without at least asking questions. 

He didn’t ask questions. She only made the barest effort to make her story coherent, letting the words spill out of her in a torrent that had just a hint of the military discipline she’d picked up from the clones and the precision she’d learned from the Jedi. 

When she’d finished, he stood up and walked over to the medbay window, staring out at the blackness of space. He thought about his brothers, almost all of them long dead, and about Anakin. He remembered running headlong into the thick of battle more times than he could count with General Skywalker leading the way, General Skywalker deflecting the blaster fire away from his squadron even as he threw himself at the enemy.

The slow-moving form of another of the ships in the Alderaanian fleet drifted across the space visible outside the window. Staring at it, Rex remembered General Skywalker listening to him when he’d told him his suspicions about Echo, letting him pursue the faintest traces even while warning him that _you might have to prepare for the possibility that Echo is dead._

He turned back to Ahsoka. She was watching him silently, letting him take his time to figure it out. He took a deep breath. “General Skywalker…is Darth Vader?”

“Yes,” she said.

“All this time?”

“Yes.” 

He shook his head, not to try to deny it, but to try to make those pieces fall into some semblance of order. In a way, it wasn’t hard to picture Anakin Skywalker turning to the dark side. Not after what the war had done to them all. But in another…he thought of Pong Krell, and again of General Skywalker, and those two ideas didn’t match up at all. 

General Skywalker had killed Jedi. Had killed children. Darth Vader, who was General Skywalker, had tried to kill Ahsoka. No, that didn’t make sense at all. 

No more than it made sense that Rex himself had tried to kill Ahsoka. But he hadn’t had a choice. General Skywalker hadn’t had a chip in his head.

It was too much, he thought. Too much to take in. He didn’t think the Kaminoans had designed his brain to deal with anything remotely like this. But looking at Ahsoka, he thought it was too much for her too, and she had actually been trained to deal with things that were too much for everyone else. 

The last time something had been too big for either of them, all those years ago at the end of the war, they had stood in silence together on a desolate moon amidst the wreckage of a Jedi cruiser. They had barely exchanged more words than necessary as they dug through the rubble, dug grave after grave, dug for what seemed like forever as they buried all the bodies of their brothers they could find. And when they’d finished, they could only stand in silence again, and then turn back to the ship and leave that place. 

He had survived that moment. He had lived a whole other life since that day, even though once he wouldn’t have thought he ever could. It might not have been the life that would have been his first choice for himself, but it had been a life he still had some say in choosing. 

He went back over to Ahsoka, sat beside her on the bed again, and moved closer until she leaned against his shoulder. “He turned away from the dark side, you said. He rescued you from the Emperor, and stopped being…that. Darth Vader.”

“Yes,” she said again, and that part wasn’t hard to believe at all. Especially General Skywalker saving Ahsoka from the Emperor. That was, maybe, the only part of the whole thing that actually made sense. 

He wondered if that didn’t just make the rest of it even worse. 

“You suspected, didn’t you?” he asked. “That’s why you were suddenly so intent on finding all that information on Vader.”

She looked away. “Yes. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything. I…didn’t know for sure.”

And she hadn’t wanted to put her suspicions into words, he guessed. He nodded. “Yeah. I get it.”

“I was lying to myself,” she said in a rush. “Again. Trying not to admit the truth, at least. I did it before. Back when…back on Mandalore. Maul told me what Anakin would do, told me what Palpatine wanted for him, and I refused to believe him.”

Rex remembered that. “Of course you didn’t. I wouldn’t have trusted Maul if he said that Wookiees have fur.”

He thought she almost smiled at that. “Maybe, but I should have known better. I did know better than to dismiss something like that without considering it carefully, without letting my feelings get in the way. If I hadn’t been so determined not to believe it, maybe…maybe I could have…”

“I don’t know about that,” Rex said after a beat of silence. “I think that sort of question’s a bit above my pay grade.”

She actually did laugh then, for a moment at least. “I thought you were officially retired. You don’t even have a pay grade.”

“Then it’s definitely above it.”

All traces of amusement vanished quickly, leaving her face aching with sorrow again, but she seemed a little more thoughtful as she turned to him. 

“Are you okay?” she asked. “I didn’t ask before.”

“You’re the one who got captured,” he pointed out.

She just gave him a look. He hadn’t really expected her to let it go at that.

He sighed, looked down at his hands, then over at her. “General Skywalker. Is…Order 66, did he…?”

“I think that’s just about the only thing he’s not responsible for,” she said. “He certainly hunted down the Jedi afterwards. And at the time, too. But the chips—he didn’t know. He didn’t even know when I told him on Malachor.” She frowned. “Although he really should have. He had to have been lying to himself. I guess that’s something we’re both good at.”

“Ahsoka,” he said.

She looked up sharply. “No. No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” She paused, took a deep breath, and looked at him intently. He could see regret in her eyes, and worry. “Are you okay, though? Really?”

“I’ve been better,” he said honestly. But for all that he didn’t like any of what she’d told him, not least of all what she’d had to go through, none of it was information that could shatter him. Not anymore. Not the way it was painfully obvious she was still struggling to cope with it all. “But yeah, I’m okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s been a long time since my days in the army,” he said. He wouldn’t say this to anyone else, but this was Ahsoka. They’d practically grown up together, at least for all the hardest parts. “General Skywalker, the Republic—they haven’t been part of my life for a long time now.” 

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean to drag you back into this.”

“Hey,” he said. “You know, you’re not actually my commanding officer anymore. No one dragged me anywhere. I’m here because I want to be.”

“Why?”

He considered for a few moments before answering. “I had a chance to live peacefully. More or less. And I’m glad I did. I almost didn’t leave, when you sent Kanan and the others to find me. I almost sent them on their way with a list of likely planets and old Republic bases and the like.”

She nodded slowly, and he could see she got the point. It hadn’t been a choice between doing nothing and plunging back into the fight. He’d had other choices and he’d known it.

“In the best of times, I might have lived the rest of my life peacefully,” he continued. “Would have surprised me once, that I would have wanted that. That I would even know what to do with a peaceful life. Turns out it’s not so bad.”

She smiled a little, a wistful smile. “Why, then?”

“This isn’t the best of times,” he said. “And I remember what the Jedi taught me. All of what they taught me. I’d like to live in a galaxy where there can be Jedi again, and maybe I have the power to help make that happen.”

“I hope so,” she said, and then, almost to herself, “I’m not sure I know how to be a Jedi anymore. There was a time when I thought I could figure it out when the war was over, but now it’s been so long—I’m not sure if I can ever be anything other than a soldier. Even when I try not to be, I can’t stop thinking that way.”

How to be a Jedi was definitely a question that wasn’t and had never been even remotely in Rex’s pay grade, but the rest was something he could answer. “Maybe not. But I thought the same once. Take it from someone who spent years where the most exciting things to happen were Wolffe calling in false alarms to the Empire and Gregor sending them on wild mynock chases after the local wildlife, a soldier isn’t all you have to be. I’ll never not be a soldier, but it isn’t all I am, not anymore.”

Her face softened at that, and for the first time since Senator Organa had rescued her, she looked genuinely happy. “Good. I’m glad to hear that. Thank you, for reminding me. I think I’d forgotten…”

“Forgotten what?” he prompted when she trailed off.

“What it’s like,” she said. “To…not be what I am now.” 

_Marked for termination by Order 66,_ his memory filled in not entirely helpfully. He generally did his best not to remember Palpatine’s last orders to him, but it wasn’t as if he could just forget. And nothing had actually changed about those orders except that he sure as hells wasn’t going to be the one to carry them out. She hadn’t had even as much choice as he had in how to live now. She’d always been on the run from the Empire, and before that she’d been at war. 

There wasn’t really an answer he could give to her, so he didn’t try. “You know,” he said instead, “if we were back on Seelos, this would probably be about the time Gregor would come in looking for someone to come slinging for joopa.”

“Really?” she asked, now definitely sounding amused again. She’d never seen a joopa, but he’d told her all about them, and about Gregor’s various techniques for catching them. Including the ones that involved using members of the Ghost crew as bait. “I’m pretty sure there aren’t any joopa on Bail’s ship.”

“No,” he said, digging in his pocket. “But I’ve got these.”

“Sabacc?” She eyed the cards he held out somewhat dubiously. “Do you even know all the rules of sabacc?”

“No. Do you?”

“No.”

“Then we should be evenly matched,” he said. 

It was a deliberate distraction, and she clearly knew it as well as he did. But he thought it was one they both needed right then, and she must have agreed, because a moment later she slid to the side to sit facing him, and said, “All right, then.”

He dealt the cards. He hadn’t been lying when he said he didn’t really know the rules—he’d picked up the cards from one of Commander Sato’s pilots, but she hadn’t had time to teach him much. Beyond a few basics, all he did know was that there were at least a dozen informal versions of gameplay, and most casual games ended in arguments over which obscure rule variants to use. Still, as a distraction it worked just fine, even if what they ended up playing was half based on what they could cobble together from memory and half made up as they went. 

Ahsoka fell asleep after the fifth hand. Rex wasn’t surprised; he’d been paying attention when the medical droid said she needed rest before she could fully recover. He gathered up the cards and eased her back into a more comfortable position, and then, unwilling to leave her on her own, claimed the bed next to hers. He might as well get some sleep while he could. And he wasn’t quite ready to go back to thinking about what Ahsoka had told him yet. Just because he knew he could cope with it, just because he’d grown perspective on his life on Seelos, didn’t mean he especially wanted to cope with it right then without the distraction of looking after Ahsoka. 

Which was a large part of the reason why, when he woke up the next morning and she was still asleep, he allowed Hera to recruit him to help with a refueling run. She didn’t truly need him, but Kanan wasn’t going on missions yet and and Sabine was helping Captain Antilles sort through some electronics that might possibly be helpful to the rebellion, and it was nice to be wanted even if just for company on what turned out to be a refreshingly uneventful mission. 

When he got back, he found that Ahsoka had left the medbay. The medical droid clearly didn’t completely approve of this as it directed him to her guest quarters, but he wasn’t too surprised. No doubt she wasn’t comfortable staying in such a relatively vulnerable position as the medbay. 

She opened the door of the guest quarters at his knock, and he came in to find her sitting on the floor. The entire room around her was filled with the softly glowing blue lines of a star chart. 

“Not staying long, are you?” he asked. 

She shook her head, looking up at him through hundreds of little blue pinpricks of light. “Just until I get medical clearance to leave.”

“Thought so.” Stepping through the map, he sat on the floor across from her. “Are you planning to go anywhere in particular?”

She stared up at the stars hovering around her for a moment more, and then flicked one hand. The map disappeared, all its lights winking out. “Hera offered to give me a ride back to Chopper Base, to get my ship.”

“Yeah, she mentioned that,” Rex said. “And after?”

“I don’t know.” Ahsoka shrugged. “Maybe that’s for the best. I can’t stay in one place long, especially now that Palpatine definitely knows I’m still alive.”

“Do you think…” he trailed off, considering what words to use. “If Anakin…isn’t Darth Vader anymore. There isn’t a Darth Vader anymore. That’s a pretty big win for our side, isn’t it? Do you think maybe…”

He couldn’t quite bring himself to say it, but she easily picked up on what he was suggesting. “I thought the war was nearly over once before. Instead, we got the Empire. All I seem to know these days is how little of what I thought I knew is true.”

This was more than just uncertainty, he realized, or dealing with everything about Anakin. She was upset about something in a way she hadn’t been last night. “What is it?”

She sighed and, seemingly just for something to do, flicked on the star chart again. “I talked to Bail.”

“Ah.” He was starting to have an inkling of why she might have been staring so intently at a map she must have memorized long ago. “And?”

“He confirmed that Obi-Wan is still alive.” The look on her face was more vulnerable than any he’d seen from her since the days after Order 66. “He wouldn’t tell me where.”

There didn’t seem to be anything he could say to that. He looked out at the holographic stars floating around them.

“We’ve always kept secrets from each other,” Ahsoka said, reaching up to rotate the map slightly. “We’ve had to, for safety. And I don’t blame him for it. It makes sense to keep secrets from me right now.” Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. “But I thought he told me everything important.”

“I don’t really know Senator Organa all that well,” he said cautiously.

“I do,” she said. “Or I thought I did.”

He paused, the pain in her words driving home the truth of them. When he’d last seen her before joining up with Phoenix Squadron, she hadn’t known Senator Organa all that well either. Of course, Organa had been friendly with the Jedi, and Rex knew that he and Ahsoka had been working closely together for years leading the rebellion. It was hardly surprising that they’d become friends in that time, but it emphasized like few other things how long Rex had been away from the fight. He didn’t regret it; he couldn’t regret what was perhaps the only time he would ever live a relatively peaceful life. But it was a reminder that the cost had been losing touch with one of his oldest friends, and he resolved not to do that again. 

“You’re still going to look for him, aren’t you?” he asked. “General Kenobi, that is. Even if you don’t know where.”

“Of course I am.” She didn’t sound terribly hopeful, but he was glad to hear a hint of the determination that had kept her alive in her voice. “And you—you’re staying with Phoenix Squadron?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ve gotten rather fond of them. Commander Sato’s a good man. And a good commander. But you—I know why you can’t stay in one place, even the rebel base, but you’ll check back in, right?”

She looked at the stars circling her head for a moment, then nodded. “I’ve gotten fond of them too.”

He left her still studying the star map when he went to go get lunch in the ship’s galley. He got his food without paying too much attention to it, thinking more about what she had said, everything she had told him about what had happened. Sometime between yesterday and today, he realized, the new pieces had started to quietly slide into place in his understanding of the world. He still wasn’t sure he liked the new understanding, but the information no longer felt quite so raw and confusing around the edges. 

On his way to a table he paused, noting Senator Organa himself sitting in the corner with several datapads in front of him. He considered just a moment, then changed direction and sat at the table across from the senator. “Senator Organa.”

“Captain Rex.” Organa set aside his datapad and raised his eyebrows, surveying Rex. After a moment’s scrutiny, he said, “Ahsoka told you everything.”

Rex appreciated the senator’s directness. He wasn’t sure if Organa was always so straightforward, or if he’d just decided that there was no point in circumlocution when he and Rex both knew what this was about, but he was glad to cut straight to the chase. He kept his voice low, although there was no one at the surrounding tables and this ship was probably about as safe as anywhere could be. “Anakin was my general. As far as I can tell, I’m all that’s left of the 501st—me and Ahsoka. Yes, she told me.”

“And do you believe her?” Organa asked, frowning intently at Rex. There was honest curiosity in his voice, which was interesting. 

Rex suddenly wondered what Organa saw when he looked at him. Most people these days, at a casual glance, tended to see him as a man far older than he actually was. If they found out he was a clone, there was an additional air of fascination, as if he was some combination of a relic from the distant past and a piece of obsolete technology. For a few in Phoenix Squadron, the novelty had worn off and they mostly treated him as a fellow soldier, albeit in an army that was almost nothing like the one he’d once served in. One or two of the Imperial defectors in their ranks seemed to regard him as one of the same, an assessment he thought wasn’t entirely inaccurate. He’d had a few interesting conversations with those defectors about the Empire’s military structure, and how familiar it seemed to him. 

Senator Organa, though…he was a mystery. Perhaps he had to be, given his job. Rex hadn’t had much to do with any of the Senate, even when he’d been an active part of the Republic’s army, and even less so after that. But he did know that Senator Organa, in addition to being a friend to the Jedi, had fought just as hard as Senator Amidala had for the legislation that would have declared the clones sentient beings deserving of full rights. Admittedly, that had been years ago. But Organa now was giving no signs that he’d dismiss Rex’s opinions out of hand, and in fact gave just the opposite impression.

“Of course I believe her,” Rex said. 

Organa looked troubled, but his response seemed more thoughtful than anything else. “I was always led to believe that when a Jedi went dark, there was nothing that could bring them back.”

“I don’t know about that,” Rex said. “Although I’m no Jedi, so I couldn’t say for sure.”

“Why do you believe her, then?” Organa asked, leaning forward slightly, and Rex wondered if maybe the senator was actually hoping to hear a reason he should believe her too. 

Rex considered, trying to sort out his thoughts into words. “Do you know what we clones were meant to be?” he asked finally.

Organa seemed puzzled, but went along with what must have seemed like a change of subject. “An army for the Republic?”

“An army, yes,” he said. “To fight clankers—droids. We weren’t meant to be much more than that. They gave us numbers when we were born, not names. We named ourselves. And the Jedi—they used our names. They tried to protect us when we went into battle. I’ve seen more than one Jedi willing to give their life to save a clone, mourning the loss of each of my brothers who died as much as we did. It didn’t make them very popular to the rest of the Republic, I don’t think.”

“No,” Organa acknowledged. “It didn’t.”

“But they did it anyway,” Rex continued. “To the Jedi, we were people. We were always more than just clankers no matter what anyone thought, but the Jedi were the first ones who wanted us to be more, treated us like we already were more, even the shiniest of shinies who still barely knew more than what we were programmed to. Enough that other people in the Republic—even in the Senate—started agreeing.” He nodded to Organa.

“Not enough people,” Organa murmured, half to himself. 

Rex shrugged. No, there hadn’t been enough. But Senator Organa had still tried, just like Senator Amidala had, and he must think it was worth it or he wouldn’t still be in the Senate even now.

“That’s why I believe her,” he finished. “Not just because she’s my friend. She is, and I’d trust her with my life in a second—I have before, and she’s trusted me with hers. But if there’s anyone who could do what she says she did, who could fight a darksider and convince him he can still be a good person, it’s a Jedi.” 

“Even a Jedi who’s not technically a Jedi?” Organa asked.

“Ahsoka might not call herself a Jedi, but she still acts like one. That’s never changed.”

“That's certainly true,” Organa said. “She’s always sounded like a Jedi to me, although sometimes I’ve wondered if I truly know what the Jedi were like.”

Rex studied him, setting aside questions of Ahsoka and Anakin for a moment and just considering everything he knew about Senator Organa. “You’ve been fighting against the Empire practically since it started, haven’t you? I’d say you know more than most.”

“Thank you,” Organa said quietly, and sincerely.

Rex nodded. “It went both ways, you know. The Jedi got to know us clones as people. We also got to know them, probably better than anyone who wasn’t one of them by the end of the war. A lot of people thought they didn’t feel anything, didn’t have anyone or anything they cared about, just like they thought about us. It wasn’t true. We never had families like most of the rest of you do, but we were our own families. The 501st, all my brothers really, they were my family—they still are, the few of us who’re still alive. The Jedi were Ahsoka’s family, Anakin and Obi-Wan especially, as much as your wife and daughter are yours.”

Organa flinched at that, and Rex paused. He hadn’t meant to attack the senator, but simply to explain. He’d realized over the years that what seemed obvious to him, maybe because of what he was, often turned out to be almost impossible for most of the rest of the galaxy to grasp. 

Organa recovered fairly quickly, though. “I understand,” he said. “I will…take your words under consideration.”

From someone else, it might have seemed dismissive. From Organa, Rex had a feeling he meant what he said as genuinely as he’d wanted Rex’s opinion in the first place. That would have to be enough.

* * *

They planned to return to Chopper Base the next day, or at least Hera did, with Rex and Ahsoka tagging along—Ahsoka to pick up her ship and go off to search for Obi-Wan, Rex to rejoin the rest of Phoenix Squadron. Not one to waste an opportunity, Senator Organa was sending them off with a number of crates of supplies, including some of the electronic parts Sabine had picked out with a worrying amount of glee, to be redistributed. Rex and Ahsoka helped load the crates, which meant that they carried half the crates and Ezra and Zeb carried the other half while squabbling the whole way, punctuated by occasional sounds of Hera lecturing Chopper as they did some last-minute maintenance on the Ghost. 

Senator Organa arrived as they were finishing loading the supplies. He beckoned Ahsoka over, caught Rex’s eye, and beckoned him over too. They followed him over to a small alcove just out of hearing range of the rest of the Ghost crew, not that any of the others were paying much attention to them at the moment.

Organa looked at them both for a moment. Then, his voice pitched only to reach the two of them, he said, “Tatooine. He’s on Tatooine.”

Rex blinked, and the meaning of Organa’s words slowly sank in. He exchanged a wide-eyed look with Ahsoka. 

“Somewhere near Mos Eisley,” Organa continued. “I don’t know any more than that.”

“That’s—enough,” Ahsoka said in a strangled voice. “That’s—oh, hells.” She shook her head, and a sudden burst of laughter escaped before she choked it back. “Tatooine. Of all the—well, I suppose if he wanted a place where Anakin would never go after him…” She took a deep breath, getting herself under control. Despite the laughter, Rex could see that there were tears in her eyes, but her voice only shook slightly as she said, “Thank you, Bail.”

“Thank you,” Rex echoed. He wasn’t sure what had made Senator Organa change his mind in the end about telling them, but he was glad he had.

Senator Organa regarded them both seriously, then reached out one hand to lightly touch Ahsoka’s shoulder. “May the Force be with you.” He glanced at Rex. “Both of you.” With a final nod to them both, he hurried away.

“All right,” Ahsoka whispered, and Rex watched her gather herself together. 

“You have a destination, then,” he said.

“I do,” she said, and her breath caught. “I really do. Do you want to come with me?”

It only caught him slightly off guard. “To Tatooine?”

“To see—Obi-Wan.” There was just a slight hesitation in her voice, as if she still couldn’t quite believe he was really alive.

He thought about it. He was glad beyond words that General Kenobi had survived, and it would be good to see him again. And, he realized, it might possibly be a chance to get an answer to one of the longest-standing mysteries he’d never been able to answer. In all his efforts to find any of his brothers who’d survived, he’d never managed to learn anything about what had happened to Cody. Not even when he’d tracked down a few others of the 212th. He knew any answers were not likely to be the ones he wanted—they almost never were—but it might be good to know for sure. 

He could wait, though. General Kenobi had been one of his Jedi, but not the same way Anakin had been, or Ahsoka. And, he thought, he didn’t need to see General Kenobi in the same way Ahsoka did. He didn’t think she’d ever really come to terms with leaving the Jedi, not the way he had with leaving—or being forced to leave—the GAR. 

“Not this time,” he said. “This time, I think you and he have Jedi business to deal with. I’d just be in the way.” It wasn’t _Jedi business_ he really meant, not quite, but he thought she’d understand well enough without him saying more.

“You’re never in the way,” she said immediately. She chewed on her lip, looking thoughtful for a moment. “But…all right. Maybe you’re right.”

“Of course I am,” he said. 

She smiled a little. “Yeah. Sure.”

“Hey,” he said, before she turned away. “Do you think you’ll see him again? Not Obi-Wan, I mean…Anakin.”

A shadow passed over her face. “I’m not certain of anything anymore. But as much as I can be sure…yes, I think so.”

“All right.” He nodded. That was good enough. If she would see Anakin again, chances were good that Rex would as well, at some point. He didn’t know when that would be, or what would happen, but he could deal with it then.

“Hey, you two!” They both looked up at the shout to see Hera waving at them from the Ghost’s entry ramp. “We’re ready to go over here! Coming?”

He glanced at Ahsoka. “Ready to go, Commander?” He kept his voice light, almost flippant on the former title that had once described everything in both of their lives. 

She smiled slightly, and he knew she got it. “Yes, I am.” She gave him a pointed look. “Commander.”

He nodded slowly, accepting the rank for the first time in a long time. It had been so easy to set aside his temporary promotion, to return to calling himself captain and leave the rank of commander with Order 66 and the graves of his brothers as another thing to be survived and move on from. But Ahsoka knew better than anyone that there had been far more to it than that. That Rex had once been proud of that promotion, and that you couldn't move on without marking the graves.

“All right then,” he said, and turned to wave at Hera. “Yeah,” he called back to her, as he and Ahsoka started making their way back to the Ghost. “Yeah, I think we’re just about ready.”


End file.
